Lifeboat restoration - April 2026

Jane Hannah MacDonald III

Recording a historic lifeboat under restoration - in film, photographs and 3D.

Photography - Video - 3D

The Jane Hannah MacDonald III is a wooden pulling and sailing lifeboat, built by Thames Ironworks in 1909 for Appledore — and right now she's mid-restoration. I spent a day recording her with the volunteers doing the work - stills, video, and a full photogrammetry scan to capture the boat exactly as she is at this stage.

She is being restored by the Appledore Maritime Heritage Trust and its many volunteers, with specialist repair work from shipwright Chris Frisby.

This page brings it together: the film, an interactive 3D scan you can spin around, the mesh, and a gallery from the day. It will grow as the scan is refined.

The film

Digital Capture

I recorded the boat with several cameras rather than treating it as a single scan. Ground photographs, drone coverage, 360 imagery and video reference all gave me overlapping evidence from different heights, lenses and working distances.

I then processed the material through my own software pipeline, written to sort, align and prepare the capture data before reconstruction. The result is a high fidelity photogrammetry model that preserves the boat's current restoration state in measurable 3D detail.

Tom Maund scanning the interior of the Jane Hannah MacDonald III with a 360 camera — Scanning the lifeboat interior with the 360 camera.

3D mesh poster — The photogrammetry mesh - drag to rotate.

Drag the slider to compare a frame from the day with the photogrammetry scan built from it.

Frame Scan

Gallery

X-Ray Cross-Sections

An x-ray view through the boat - two hundred horizontal slices through the photogrammetry mesh, taken from below the keel rising up through the hull. Drag the slider for frame-by-frame inspection, or press play for a flythrough from bottom to top.

Cross-section view through the JHM III hull — Top, side and front cross-sections through the JHM III. Pick an axis, then drag the slider or press play to bounce through that view's 200-frame stack.

Blueprint

The slice data that drives the X-Ray viewer above can be composited into the classic three-view drawings used in shipbuilding: a plan (looking down), an elevation (the side profile), and a body plan (cross-sections at stations from bow to stern). Each line you can pick out here is the outline of one slice through the photogrammetry mesh; stacked, they recreate the waterlines, buttock lines and station lines a draughtsman would set out by hand, but generated directly from the measured hull.

Jane Hannah MacDonald III

35 ft × 8 ft 6 in

Bow forward stations

Stern aft stations

Profile elevation, looking from the side

Plan looking down

Lines plan composited from the photogrammetry slice stacks via the classical builder's-plan conventions — waterlines on the plan, buttocks on the profile, forward stations on the bow and aft stations on the stern.

Alternative render

Gaussian splatting is a newer way of reconstructing a scene from photographs, using many small translucent points instead of a conventional textured mesh; it can preserve soft light, reflections and context from the workshop, though the surrounding areas remain lower resolution and hazier than the main photogrammetry model.

3D scan poster — A different type of 3D render from the same capture, including low resolution, hazy views of the surrounding workshop - drag to orbit, scroll to zoom.

Captured with

Date: April 2026
Mediums: Photography - Video - 3D
Gear: Sony A7IV - Osmo 360 - Neo 2 - Mini 4 Pro - iPhone 16 Pro
3D pipeline: Photogrammetry - Gaussian splatting

The outcome

A 3D record of the Jane Hannah MacDonald III as she is mid-restoration, alongside the film and stills from the day. If you'd like this kind of record of a vessel or a place, see the 3D & photogrammetry page, or get in touch below.

More work

Something similar in mind?

If your vessel, place or project could use this kind of record, I'd love to hear about it.